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Introduction The argument that
Paul and other early Christians would not have known about loving, committed,
long-term homosexual relationships, unions, or even marriages is false. A myth has developed in contemporary ‘scholarship’
about what antiquity understood on these matters, perpetuated by scholars who
refuse to do the heavy lifting work of actual research in the primary sources
rather than just quote one another. It
is as though the argument has been hermetically sealed by those pushing the
revisionist agenda of same-sex unions: actual research would be highly
inconvenient were it to reveal the myth. The mistaken
scholarship seems to have begun in the 1980s with Robin Scroggs, who argued
that … pederasty was the only model [for
homosexuality] in existence in the world of [Paul’s] time.” And “at the risk of
seeming endlessly repetitive, I close with the observation that Paul thinks of
pederasty, and perhaps the more degraded forms of it, when he is attacking
homosexuality.[1] Thi…

Introduction The subject of sexual orientation in antiquity is discussed here as a topic of a 'mission to the West' because recent, revisionist interpretations of the Church's consistent teaching on homosexuality through the millenia undermine the Gospel that a culture going through its own revisions and becoming increasingly post-Christian needs to hear: God transforms sinful human beings through the good news of Jesus Christ. Even sinful orientations, entrenched as they are (Aristotle called them, among other things, 'states of character'), can be transformed. Here, the subject is that Paul would have known about the idea of sexual orientation since his culture did. Thus, he does not oppose homosexuality in ignorance of orientation--as though we know more today and can therefore ignore Paul's teaching. John Shelby Spong believed, along with any number of
other persons discussing Christianity and homosexuality, that the ancient world
knew nothing of sexual or…